If you missed it, Steve Silberman's Wired article titled "Placebos are getting more Effective. Drugmakers are desperate to know why" is well worth your 15 minutes to read.
It chronicles Big Pharma's heroic battle against sugar pills.
Half of all drugs that fail in late-stage trials drop out of the pipeline due to their inability to beat sugar pills.
...
It's not only trials of new drugs that are crossing the futility boundary. Some products that have been on the market for decades, like Prozac, are faltering in more recent follow-up tests. In many cases, these are the compounds that, in the late '90s, made Big Pharma more profitable than Big Oil. But if these same drugs were vetted now, the FDA might not approve some of them. Two comprehensive analyses of antidepressant trials have uncovered a dramatic increase in placebo response since the 1980s. One estimated that the so-called effect size (a measure of statistical significance) in placebo groups had nearly doubled over that time.
It's not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It's as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger.
The fact that an increasing number of medications are unable to beat sugar pills has thrown the industry into crisis. The stakes could hardly be higher. In today's economy, the fate of a long-established company can hang on the outcome of a handful of tests.
Why are inert pills suddenly overwhelming promising new drugs and established medicines alike? The reasons are only just beginning to be understood. A network of independent researchers is doggedly uncovering the inner workings—and potential therapeutic applications—of the placebo effect. At the same time, drugmakers are realizing they need to fully understand the mechanisms behind it so they can design trials that differentiate more clearly between the beneficial effects of their products and the body's innate ability to heal itself.
Whatever we do, let's not ever tap into the "body's innate ability to heal itself" (through belief or laughter or diet/exercise... etc). Let's not research that, because the profits are in daily pills. If you teach a person that there are alternatives to pills, you've lost a wonderful business opportunity.
Labels: health
